Monthly Archives: January 2012

Every once in a while, I’ll present a 2012 UCLA football recruit, give reasons why he should be rated high in the context of our football program and reasons he shouldn’t be rated high. The point is to look at the context of the signing. Did we pick up a 5-star wide-out when our class already includes two of them? Did we nab a 3-star linebacker when we’re stacked with 4-star LBs?

And that’s what my job is. Your job is to give an honest assessment of the player, from a scale of 1 star to 5 stars, by voting in the poll at the bottom. Consider our current strengths and weaknesses as well as our coaching staff for the position. If you disagree with whatever reasoning I have, back your shit up in the comments.

Ellis McCarthy is our only five-star recruit. That said, there couldn’t be a more important position to have a five-star recruit, especially here at UCLA (save for defensive end).

Why should you give him 5 stars?

McCarthy is a total freak. At his size, he’ll be one of the most dominant defensive tackles in the nation if he’s groomed correctly. Currently, Scout compares him to, guess who, Ndamukong Suh, the beastly DT out of Nebraska who’s continuing his mean-as-hell streak in Detroit with the Lions.

What’s most important, though, is that our defensive line was shoddy last year (and years prior). Our pass-rush was total trash in 2011 and it’d be nice to actually see someone get in the back-field quick enough to force some game-changing pressure on the QB. McCarthy has the size to bulldoze himself through the offensive line, and at 6’5”, he’s going to be able to get his hands up and blind most college quarterbacks.

There’s no doubt that he’s as talented as they come, and there is really no doubt that UCLA’s defensive line needs him. But …

Why should you give him 1 star?

As the case was with Devin Fuller, it’d be ridiculous to give him one star. But the issues with McCarthy are, surprisingly, more glaring than the issues with Fuller. The four-letter network’s scouting report is actually pretty scathing for a 5-star recruit. They mention his inability to explode fast enough to get off the line and beat blockers before they get in proper position. They also mention that he tends to try to get around blockers a bit too much, not something you want to see from a DT, whose job, primarily, is to clog up space in the middle, collapse the pocket, take up an extra blocker or two and allow for linebackers to close in on the back-field or to force the pocket to collapse enough so that the quarterback gets hurried and makes mistake.

Scout.com also lists an area of improvement: “Intensity/Effort.” And in case you didn’t know, “Intensity/Effort” is something we’ve been missing at UCLA for the longest time. Coach Jim Mora is definitely going to get the guys more disciplined, but does McCarthy tend to take plays off every so often, and if so, will he kick that habit?

There’s no doubt that there’s a place for McCarthy to fit in, especially since we need him, but is his work ethic a concern?

Enough from me, you guys. Your turn. Considering what I presented to you, rate Ellis McCarthy’s value to this program on a scale of 1 star to 5 stars.

Ah, February 1. The day college football fans across the country have to endure gut-wrenching, eye-gauging, sweat-till-your-head-itches misery at the hands of kids who aren’t even legally allowed to buy a cigarette (not that we’d want them to).

National Signing Day. The day that 17-year olds get to hold their own version of The Decision. Where all eyes are on them, and they can make or break (supposedly) a college football program.

Well, because I cover UCLA athletics, I think it’s only fair that I cover this, too, as it relates to UCLA. There are quite a few offers we’ve made to prospects who are either not committed to a school just yet, or to those who have had soft commitments to other, less awesome universities. Whatever it is, I’ll be around these parts starting now (yes, I know — it’s only 9 p.m.) all the way through National Signing Day 2012. (How’s that for SEO, Google?)

After I receive some news about a recruit, I will post an update on this blog post so you can see who it is we have signed. There figures to be some movement the evening before, but we’ll see what happens.

And as I wrote this blog post, we have an apparent commit. So let’s take a look to see how these things will shape up:

While those highlights are nice, it’s important to note that the context of this signing almost negates the fact that he’s a 3-star wide-out. Up until now, we hadn’t gotten as good of a commitment at WR for the class of 2012, and now that there will be future targets for either T.J. Millweard, Brett Hundley or Devin Fuller to throw to, we can breathe, but not too much — it’s still just one wide-receiver.

UCLA football tight-end Joseph Fauria and kicker Jeff Locke are the No. 1 prospects, at their respective positions, in the 2013 NFL Draft, according to CBS Sports.

That’s not surprising, if you keep up with UCLA football. Fauria is a freaking animal at 6’8″ and has the athleticism of an agile 6-footer. He’s got great hands and he’s incredibly hard to take down most times. His biggest issue last season was, well, Kevin Prince throwing him the ball. Here’s a video of when he did, which resulted in two touchdowns for Fauria against Colorado:

Sure, Fauria didn’t get very many passes thrown his way (considering UCLA ran the pistol and either Kevin Prince or Jonathan Franklin/Derrick Coleman had possession), but this year figures to be different. Noel Mazzone is a pass-first coordinator and that figures to be the philosophy. Sure, tight ends aren’t something Mazzone uses too often, but considering he has an animal at that position, he’ll figure out how to pump up Fauria’s draft status.

And Jeff Locke? Oh. My. Goodness.

If you can use the words “stud” and “kicker” in the same sentence when talking about football prospects, then somewhere in that sentence, Jeff Locke has to be involved. Dude’s got a leg and though field position never mattered too much for our beloved Bruins (since they gave up scores anyway), he definitely made it difficult for offenses by nailing kicks incredibly deep. Plus, he’s seriously an All-World blocker on returns, too. Not really, but he’s feisty:

Other Bruins were reppin’, too: Jonathan Franklin is the seventh-best RB in the 2013 NFL draft, and for good reason — he was a third of the reason that UCLA’s run game was easily the team’s best attribute. Over the past two seasons at UCLA, he’s ran for nearly 2000 yards, and was 23 yards short of becoming the first Bruin to ever run for a grand back-to-back since DeShaun Foster did it in 2001-02. Patrick Larimore also made it as the sixth-best linebacker, a well-deserved honor as he was by far UCLA’s best tackler. (I know that doesn’t mean much since NO ONE AT UCLA KNEW HOW TO TACKLE, but come on!)

Hopefully, with all this euphoria surrounding UCLA football, we can get back on the field and we’ll see these bros’ draft stock rise throughout the course of the season.

Like this:

(Note: I’ve changed the name of this feature from “RATE THAT KID” to “POLL DON’T LIE” because 1) Rasheed Wallace is a bad-ass, and 2) “RATE THAT KID” is super lame. So is “POLL DON’T LIE” but whatever.)

Smell that, you guys? It’s that funky-ass smell you smell when things get … smelly.

That’s right — it’s a new (and our first) feature here at the Sons of Westwood. What’s a feature, you ask? It’s a series of blog posts with an overarching theme. Like Ball Don’t Lie’s Days of NBA Lives or Shutdown Corner’s Smarter Stats.

This feature is inspired by the recruiting euphoria we’re experiencing in Jim L. Mora’s first few weeks on the job.

Every once in a while, I’ll present a player, give reasons why he should be rated high and reasons he shouldn’t be rated high. The point is to look at the context of the signing. Did we pick up a 5-star wide-out when our class already includes two of them? Did we nab a 3-star linebacker when we’re stacked with 4-star LBs?

And that’s what my job is. Your job is to give an honest assessment of the player, from a scale of 1 star to 5 stars, by voting in the poll at the bottom. (Note: If you bleed True Blue and Gold, all recruits will be 5-star recruits, but let’s assess them considering UCLA’s current depth at the position and the current strengths and weaknesses.) If you disagree with whatever reasoning I have, back your shit up in the comments.

Devin Fuller is compared to Pat White according to Rivals. That’s a pretty lofty comparison considering White had a wildly successful college career, but it’s also very accurate. The scouting report — and the video at the beginning of this post — suggests that this dude is a freaking speed demon. He’s got great pocket awareness and knows how to extend plays with his feet.

That’s not all, though. The kid can toss a serious deep ball with the flick of his wrist, off his back foot. (Check the 2:05 mark in the video above.) With a gun like that, the offense can get seriously vertical and the defense will have to be spread incredibly thin because his deep ball and his ability to gain major yardage (he ran for 3600 yards combined in the past two seasons) forces a defense on its heels.

The dude’s a playmaker and, based on the scouting report at ESPN, he’s a confident QB who is comfortable taking command in the huddle.

Why should you give him 1 star?

I don’t know how you’d justify giving him a 1-star rating, but there are definitely concerns.

The most glaring? He’ll be a dual-threat, short, fast QB in Noel Mazzone’s offense — the one that’s been run by guys like 6’8” Brock Osweiler at ASU and 6’5” Philip Rivers at NC State. (Apparently, Mazzone loves QBs who throw all weird.) In case you didn’t know, neither of those guys are a threat to run, instead keeping more of a pocket presence. It’ll be interesting to see if Mazzone will tweak his offense to accommodate both Fuller and redshirt freshman QB Brett Hundley (another QB who’s a threat to run) or if both of those guys progress enough to compete with T.J. Millweard, the prototypical Mazzone QB. (If UCLA is run with serious discipline, it’ll be the former.)

I don’t know if Fuller is going to stay all that patient in the pocket, or if he should be pedestrian in the back-field.

Another concern is that GPA — 2.9 is pretty low, and while that won’t affect his play on the field, is it possible that he won’t even get on the field if his grades are stinky?

And then you must consider the competition: We have Brett Hundley, the apparent “savior” of UCLA football and T.J. Millweard, a QB that Mazzone was undoubtedly looking forward to coaching.

That’s enough from me, though. What do you think? How many stars do you give Fuller?

As you have heard by now, our recruiting class is sick (which is another word for “awesome,” old people). As of right now, we have the highest-ranked recruiting class in the Pac-12 according to Scout.com and Rivals (the first time this has happened since 2002). This comes after a bleak outlook for our beloved university’s football program, not just in terms of recruiting, but overall, when everyone was shocked to learn Jim L. Mora would become our head football coach.

Twenty-three recruits, three highly-regarded recruiters and a Noel Mazzone later, and all of a sudden, the excitement around this football program seems to have peaked for the first time in a long, long while.

Of course, many of us will enter the season with a crap-load of skepticism before getting all giddy over our football team, and for good reason: This school was equally excited when we figured Rick Neuheisel would be our savior back in 2008.

Things seem a little different this time around, for sure, but that doesn’t mean the result won’t end up the same. Which might — just might — lead to a little impatience from the Bruin faithful.

Just how impatient are we, though? We’ve been expecting to win the Pac-12 ever since the end of Neuheisel’s first year and the fan-base was incredibly upset throughout the entire 2011 campaign.

The question should be looked at more specifically, too. So, specifically, how many losing seasons will it take Mora to earn himself a pink slip? How many wins must he rack up per year to keep him on as coach? How long will we wait for his Bruins to get into a Rose Bowl (or a BCS bowl) before we say adios, amigo.

Personally? I have no idea. I can say this, though: A 6-6 season would be underachieving, but it wouldn’t be enough for me to ask for Mora’s head after the first year. 6-6 is where this team was at last season, and depending on how those six losses are accumulated (Neuheisel’s 6-6 squad either won by a close margin at home or lost by at least three or four touchdowns on the road), it might not be such a bad thing. If Mora’s squad gets, say, four of six losses by seven points or less, I can’t ask for his head immediately, because it’s possible that the team has a 10-2 record. Again, for me, everything is arbitrary.

But if Mora goes 4-8? I couldn’t stomach it, considering the team was inconsistent as hell last year and still got to .500 on the season.

Additionally, it’d be nice to get to the Rose Bowl — or a BCS bowl — within two years. If progress is slower than what I expect, I wouldn’t mind being shafted by the more-arbitrary-than-I-am BCS committee, especially if our record two seasons down the line winds up being 9-3 or 10-2.

But if there are two straight 6-6 seasons? I couldn’t stomach that either, for the same reasons I couldn’t stomach a 4-8 season to start.

But that’s me, and I don’t pretend to speak for the entire UCLA community. What say you? How patient will you be with Mora?

We already know that UCLA has done a damn fine job of putting together a class that’s right up there with the best of them after having an incredibly shoddy start to our recruiting. Mora’s acquisition of guys like Noel Mazzone, Demetrice Martin and Adrian Klemm are seriously paying its dividends before February 1 (National Signing Day).

So not only will we have a legitimate QB competition this season between seniors Richard Brehaut and Kevin Prince, and redshirt freshman Brett Hundley, but we’ll also have an interesting-as-hell competition the year after with Brett Hundley likely competing with our shiny, new toy, Devin Fuller.

Add that to the fact that we have what is possibly the best offensive coordinator in the nation, a 6-foot-8-inch beast of a tight end in Joe Fauria and a nice offensive line, and we could have ourselves the best UCLA football season in damn near a decade.

Of course, receivers are going to be an issue for UCLA this year — we have one three-star commit at wide-out in Fabian Moreau — and that might be something to watch for. But considering that this is probably the best coaching staff UCLA has assembled in a long-ass time, we my have a reason to be uncharacteristically optimistic.

(Note: As expected, I have been banned from BruinsNation, the second account that I’ve been banned from.)

As much as I hate back-and-forths, and solely dedicating myself to reaction from other blogs (that’s really a bad way to go about things, aspiring bloggers), I feel like there is no more important back-and-forth than the one that might be going on between sorry-ass excuse for a bl_g BruinsNation, and myself here at the Sons of Westwood.

Recently, a UCLA bl_gger I once respected at BN posted a bl_g post entitled Reason and Consistency In The Message. (Note: I normally wouldn’t harm your eyes by linking you to their drivel, but it’s important to note that they see the pingbacks. Otherwise, the lazy ingrates wouldn’t know what’s going on outside of their tiny little Internet bubble.) It isn’t clear to me if this was in response to a blog post about my hate for BN. And though normally I’d brush it off as a coincidence, I considered the factors: First, that blog post is the most-viewed and commented blog post of any other on this website, which means the necessity for a true, objective, smart UCLA blog isn’t one that’s exclusive to me. Second, the blog post spread throughout the Bruin Report Online messageboards at scout.com without me posting it anywhere else save for reddit.com/r/ucla. Third, it included one tidbit that seemed pretty specific:

Bruins Nation isn’t just making this stuff up out of nowhere. The people here at Bruins Nation, and that includes the majority of readers and commenters and posters, in addition to the front pagers, are the most hard core blue and gold Bruin fans there are. And I’m willing to bet that with our love and devotion we feel a sense of pride in upholding the standards of excellence that we associate with our school, and a sense of responsibility for calling out those that are damaging U.C.L.A. It’s the ongoing eye-test, using Coach’s ideals of excellence (which is not the same as records) as the bar.

Protecting and propagating the U.C.L.A. ideals should be all of our responsibility as Bruins. When anyone connected with U.C.L.A., from Nicola Dragovich to Alexandra Wallace to Chianti Dan Guerrero, falls short of those ideals or even appears to counter them, it as our responsibility to call out those responsible and hold them accountable. I am proud of Bruins Nation’s record in upholding the traditional values of excellence for our school.

There has been no shortage of vitriol and tangible opposition to Guerrerror from Bruins Nation. And it has been seen in other places around the blogosphere and mainstream media, but only to a far lesser extent. Some of those people whine that Bruins Nation is not representative of the entire Bruin fan base. We see comments or entire blog posts that cry that we push things too far and too hard, that we are too rigid, that we can’t be happy with good enough, and that we aren’t good Bruins.

That last section convinced me — this was a clear response to what I had posted. Because, oddly enough, there aren’t very many other UCLA blogs that consistently post. Sure, they’re there, but they’re a little tougher to find (much like this one is, since it’s a little baby). And even further, those UCLA blogs that are still around haven’t put up “entire blog posts” that criticize BruinsNation the way I had done a few days ago.

Of course, it also threw me off that they said these blog posts “cry that we push things too far and too hard.” Surely, I thought, this couldn’t be about the post I had written. Because I never questioned that they pushed too hard — I merely mentioned that they were unreasonable in their expectations, and were always incredibly radical and never moderate (or sober) in writing those expectations.

But, I did say they weren’t good Bruins and that still holds true — good Bruins don’t suppress or belittle other Bruins or their thoughts on the state of Bruin Nation (not to be confused with the name of that sorry bl_g “BruinsNation”). If the majority of UCLA fans wanted Jim Tressel as the head coach if he received no show-clause order, then dammit, that’s what the UCLA fans want — you don’t delete FanPosts and FanShots (blog posts and links submitted by readers, not authors/admins) and try and conduct shitty polls to move the numbers in your favor. Not one FanPost that favored Tressel during that time (if you have no idea what I’m talking about, please refer to this) was bumped to the front-page, yet the ones that fit the ideal direction that the idiots at BN want to go in are the ones that are posted on the front-page. Over and over and over again. Enough to make you sick to your fucking stomach.

We get enough harassment on BruinWalk by people who want you to sign petitions; why the hell should we put up with it at BN? Why the hell should BN, which is the most hated UCLA blog of them all, represent our beloved university on a collection of elite sports blogs? Why does our university have to deal with the embarrassing drivel that BN posts every day?

And what’s the most ridiculous aspect of BN’s “response”? That they feel as if they’re the true Bruins. That they are the only ones who bleed True Blue and Gold. (Remember: School colors changed from “blue” to “True Blue” you out-of-touch-and-senile asses.) Those who oppose BN are the apathetic Bruins, the ones who, by their standards, couldn’t give a shit. The ones who don’t partake in their radical, asshole’ish ideology are idiots. We’re the apathetic ones. (Notice that they’re the only college bl_g — or any bl_g for that matter — on SB Nation that is less of a community then it is a single-serving goal.)

But that’s BN for you — they’re a collection of people who happened to graduate from UCLA (instead of UCLA alum) and think that athletics is the only thing that should represent the University of California, Los Angeles. (Perhaps they grew up in an era where UCLA took in 3.3 GPAs out of high school; maybe they should try and get into UCLA sometime soon so they can realize that academics has over-taken athletics and that a 3.90 GPA through two years at a community college might not be good enough to get you in. The current state of the university isn’t fucked — they are.)

And if you happened to stay proud of your university despite the current flaws with its athletics? If you desire to read anything else but “FIRE CHIANTI DAN AND U’RE ALL HATERZ, HOWLERZ, AND NEUBS”? If you disagree with their agenda, which is a pseudo-representation of the current state of the fan-base? And, dammit, if you refused to give Neuheisel a chance in 2008, or if your gut reaction was to give Mora a shot in 2012?

Then, according to that sorry-ass excuse for a bl_g BruinsNation, and their idiot wannabe-cult-leader “Nestor,” you aren’t a Bruin at all.

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The Goal

The UCLA community is a large one. But just because it's big, doesn't mean the community can't be a tight-knit, smart, and affectionate one.
That's the goal of the Sons of Westwood. The goal is to stay open to the ideas of the community and provide whatever news possible on our beloved UCLA Bruins. The goal is to be inclusive.
And to do that, dear reade-- nay, community member, we need you. Not to write, but to comment away, and converse. To be Bruins and speak your mind.
Our goal, then, is to get you to care more than you ever did about your fellow Bruins by way of the most unifying institution in America: Sports.
So cheer loud and be proud. Go Bruins!!